Ze goggles, zey do nothink!

You mean "...it took me to the part on sound-absorbing tiles, which made me wonder how much neoprene compresses underwater, so I had to look up the formula for..."<7 hours later, you wrote your above post>

Focusing your eyes (and to a lesser extent, adjusting your iris to changing brightness) is like making a fist.

In a day's reading, that's happening about 30,000 times. Bit of a strain. What can we do to cut down that number or lessen the amount of muscle-force needed? Keep your irises closed down. Happens in photography all the time. Small iris-openings means a wider depth-of-field. Focused for 1m, with a small iris setting, objects at .5 and 1.5m might appear sharply focused. A really wide-open iris setting, and suddenly only objects at .9 to 1.1m are in focus.

Your eye sweeps the page/screen as you read a line. It's unlikely that surface is perfectly curved so every letter is exactly the same distance from your eye, so a little focusing might be needed from the left, through the middle, to the right of the line. (That's where they came up with the 30k estimate.)

So if we could pick an ideal, minimal iris opening to minimize that re-focusing during the scan, wouldn't it be easier on our eyes?

And how do we get that minimal iris opening? With a brighter average scene. Light mode. Or perhaps "light-ish mode." As many people have pointed out, extremes aren't our friends. But we need contrast to read, we just don't need it to be at 11 all the time.

YMMV. @HousePanther, you might need glasses. Strain=bad, but cyclical strain vs steady-state strain might be worse. You do you, I'm sticking with white or light backgrounds.

One word: Deer

Roll of toilet paper in a plastic bag, big enough for...emergencies....
chest-wound bandage. Never needed it yet.... 2 25'x1" double-thick nylon climbing webbing. Pulled a friend's bike out of a DEEP ravine with those.... Bungie net (customizing it now so those stupid metal hooks stop clawing up my pillion handles; tall enough extension-lines to carry a paper towels pack home from Costco. No, really. More than once.)... 2 cable locks: cheesy one for helmet, bike-sized one to thread through my riding suit. In case my cases are full... Tools. Not having a Torx cost me $600 in towing. (BMW: carry them, micro-to-elephant)... Tools... Spare body panel screws... Spare helmet shield (I saw one fly off a guy in front of me on a group ride once.)... Prescription** athletic safety glasses** (in case of above happening TWICE)... Paracord, (see bungie net) but I'm upgrading that to Dyneema (be careful, that stuff CUTS. Hands, plastic, etc.)... Disposable gloves (for rain, or if I ever need that chest-wound bandage)... Voltmeter... Flashlights. More than 2. Even in broad daylight,... USB Battery pack (if not carrying @FonderThud's jump-box)... Cooling vest and scarf (I wear 1-piece suits. Debridement scares me)... Conspicuity vest, flag, even a fluorescent microfober rags...

How? I subscribed to F1's service, and I'm so freaking sick of their idiotic presenters, I'm looking for a new addiction. Also, FWIW, I really don't care about the meatbags steering the things as much as about the machines and teams that build/maintain them.

(I acknowledge their skill, they're as superhuman as their car/bike is supernormal. Literally.)

File their nails. My last "coating" on my 08 K1200GT (before 2nd gear started popping out) was to tile it with sandpaper. It was grey-colored skate board traction tape. 4" wide, sticky backed, I cut 2:1 rectangles and covered it like the space shuttle. Replaceable tiles if damaged, and as hard as the road. I covered the tank in 3m's calendared-vinyl non-skid, and this is why the entire project worked phenomenally well. I recently covered my K1600GT's tank with the traction tape, and it SHREDDED my riding gear. Lesson: you can indeed sandpaper-cover your bike, but not the panels that the rider contacts.

Friends would walk up, laugh, and do a little nail-file when they saw it.

For what it's worth, anti-seize compound has the added benefit of preventing accidental/vibrational loosening. The high-temp (copper) stuff is pretty damned universal. Obviously, LocTite is what we all think of, but it won't prevent rusting. It's only my opinion, but every bolt on my bike gets one of those two.

Darn it, too bad you couldn't ship them home as parts. (Radar, MASH) It would be funny to look up the rules, it's possible removing the wheels or handlebars or something simple renders the entire thing as "parts." (Still, I feel your pain.)

Add: wet concrete dust/tailings. Avoid those pavement-cutter crews like the plague. Also: wet street-sweeper dust and leaves. Wet paint, as in, rain on pedestrian-crosssing stripes.

If you MUST ride over any lo-traction surface, "loose hands, tight knees." Try to neutralize all acceleration, get off brakes and throttle. Let the suspension be in its happiest set before hitting the <whatever.>

I've aged prematurely along with you, @i_promise_nothing@lemmy.ml, tar snakes suck.

Humans are wired to notice/recall the rare and the lurid. It's how we survived way-back-when. So we give disproportionate attention to crashes. For each crash-and every one of them is a terrible thing-you've got to figure close to a billion rides completed safely just that day. Motos are everywhere, and the most common individual transport in a lot of places. We don't have an organ in our brains for statistical understanding, this is why we just naturally come to believe motorcycling is more dangerous than it is.

Having said all that, it IS dangerous. Dress for the slide, not the ride. Because "debridement" (DO NOT look at the pictures) is just about the most painful procedure a human can endure AND it's success isn't great because of post-procedure infection. Am I sweating in my suit, helmet, boots, and gloves? Oh yeah. Because road rash SUCKS.

That motel is GREAT. The Tail is a lovely ride.